On Tuesday, August 13th, French officials announced that over 140 cyberattacks occurred during the Paris Olympics. Despite the large number of incidents, none of them affected the competition.
Before and during the Olympics, France’s cybersecurity agency was closely monitoring for any attacks that might result in problems with the event’s organization, ticket sales, or transportation.
Between July 26th and August 11th, France’s cybersecurity agency, Anssi, recorded 119 minor “security events” and 22 more serious incidents in which attackers successfully breached a victim’s information system.
The agency reported that these attacks primarily focused on government agencies, as well as sports, transport, and telecommunications infrastructure.
One-third of cyberattacks caused server downtime
Anssi reported that about one-third of the incidents involved server downtime, with half of these caused by denial-of-service attacks aimed at overwhelming the systems.
Other cyber incidents included attempts to breach systems or access sensitive data. Despite these events, Anssi stated that all of them had a generally low impact.
The Paris 2024 #Olympic Games have suffered a cyberattack, with cryptocurrency ransom demanded. Around 40 French tourist sites, including the Grand Palais, have been affected, threatening to disclose sensitive data pic.twitter.com/qp2cHaL6qY
— CRYPTO VIKING (@Crypt0V1king) August 12, 2024
In early August, a ransomware attack targeted the Grand Palais in Paris, which hosted Olympic events, along with around 40 other museums in France. However, Anssi confirmed that this attack did not affect any systems related to the Olympic Games.
Ransomware is a type of cyberattack that takes advantage of security weaknesses to lock and encrypt computer systems, demanding payment to unlock them.
Cyberattacks during the Tokyo and London Olympics
During the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, around 450 million cyberattacks were successfully blocked, according to local media reports on Tuesday. These attempts targeted the official website and the organizing committee’s systems from the opening of the Olympics on July 23, 2021 until the closing of the Paralympics on September 5, 2021.
The organizing committee stated that information sharing and proactive countermeasures helped prevent these cyberattacks without resulting in any damage.
The National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC), a Japanese government agency, confirmed that the numerous attempts to breach security, including during the opening and closing ceremonies, did not disrupt the course of the event.
Trend Micro, a leading internet security firm, reported that the number of cyberattacks during the Tokyo Olympics was lower than that recorded during the 2012 London Summer Games and the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The company attributed this to the fact that the Tokyo Games were held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it harder for hackers to exploit ticket and audience information.
The London Olympics experienced the highest number of confirmed cyberattacks on record, with the official website being targeted approximately 200 million times with a total of around 2.3 billion attacks on all related organizations.
